Prof_Peabody

sog35 said:

stevie said:

Nobody at Apple cares that much about the stock price.  They are just trying their best to make great products.  The stock price will take care of itself.

Bullshit.

Of course Apple cares about the stock price. That was the whole reason why they are buying back $100 billion in stock.

I'm pretty sure Angela Enherts and the new CFO care about the stockprice.  Or any other executive hired the last 3 years.  Unlike Cook/Ives they don't have stock with a cost basis of $2.  The newer employees could actually be underwater at this point. 

If the stock keeps underperforming, eventually the employees will get fed up and go to another company (Amazon, MSFT, Google) that has a strong stock performance.

Remember that with the top level employees 90% of their compensation is based on the stock.

Nah, it's your reply (and analysis) that's BS.  If there is one thing that Apple is famous for, it's being an "old-school" company that focusses on what it's job is and eschews the whole "everything comes down to money," capitalist ideology (how successful they are is up for debate but at least they try).  

You talk about Apple stock underperforming yet it's one of the best performing stocks the planet has even seen.  You talk about how the top employees all get their compensation through stock (not actually true, but whatever), yet these people are all multi-millionaires many times over, some of them are billionaires.  Slight fluctuations in the value of their vast, vast holdings of what's possibly the best stock on the market at the moment is not likely to be a big issue on their minds.  

Especially the idea that Apple employees might actually leave the company and go work for a monstrous corporation like Amazon (that treats their customers and employees alike like dirt under their feet), just because Amazon offers a better stock options package or a higher stock price is purest fantasy.  It's so unlikely as to be ludicrous.  

... Reports have suggested that it will lack the 3D Touch pressure sensing input of the iPhone 6s series, but will sport a metal chassis giving it a more "premium" feel than the iPhone 5c ...

Apple doesn't need an iPhone 5c with a more "premium" feel, they need an iPhone 6c that's cheaper.  

Revisiting the mistakes of the iPhone 5c and believing that giving it a more "premium" body will fix those mistakes is nonsense.  The people in India (and anywhere there are poor and working class people), aren't interested in the 5 series of iPhones because of their 4" screens, like most folks, they are interested because they are the only ones they can afford.  

For Apple to make any inroads against Android in the third world and other price conscious markets, it needs to make an inexpensive model, not a small model with a "premium feel."  That segment of the market doesn't give a shit about "feel" or they wouldn't be buying Android, would they?  

ireland said:

Cameron is one of the most anti-democratic British leaders I've seen in a long time. These guys want to know everything we do. It makes civilised countries feel like Nazi Germany. The so-called "good guys" become more scary every year.

I think he's more just a typical old-school Tory.  It's just that his methods and statements seem extreme in light of you know, the modern world, civilisation, etc.  

Britain as a whole is very much living in the past IMO, but the Tory party probably more than the rest of them.  Cameron still believes in class privilege, white male rule, and all that other nonsense although he's far too cowardly and duplicitous to say it out loud.  

I love the part on "extra-territoriality." 

It's basically Apple saying at the end: "And by the way, you wrote this law incorrectly" (by pointing out the obvious jurisdictional flaw).    

It seems clear that the bill was written by a politician instead of an actual lawyer.  

knowitall said:

Extremely laughable, PGP and other tools make this argument useless.
(Mr Zimmerman - the creator of PGP, was extremely harassed the US government, but he succeeded to keep the tool free for all.)
Mr Cook should have mentioned the fact that encryption is a basic human right and as such cannot be forbidden or withheld.

I agree with the thrust of what you're saying and am completely in favour of Tim Cooks stance on encryption, but this statement, "... encryption is a basic human right and as such cannot be forbidden or withheld" is absolute nonsense of the highest order.  

There is no "basic human right" in the USA or even in the more progressive countries to encryption technology.  There is not even a "basic right" to privacy in the sense that you are describing it here.  Add to that, the ridiculousness of arguing that such rights as might exist are somehow absolute or immutable and you have a big pile of nonsense.  

All rights are subject to the rights of others and none of them are absolute in the way you see to imagine.